We saw a wide variety of designs, drivers, etc. during the
day.Open baffle, single driver, two
ways, MTMs, 3 ways, unusual rear channel surround speakers, etc.The smallest must have been 1/3cuft while
the largest was around 7cuft!At some
point, Dave Edeck was worried that things would disappear from the hall, but
that wasn’t going to happen with the latter speakers!We saw some great wood working as well ( more later).

Speakers Waiting their turn (Edwin, Steve,
respectively)

Getting Ready to Listen (Barry W)

Auditions In Progress

(Thurman) John
Jackson Acutons (Edwin H)

John Busch with Giants (Steve H)Andy Newell w/ Open Baffle (Barry W)

Specific
Photos/Designs

These are roughly in order of audition. Only those with photos written up.Please feel free to send in more comments as
I did not get a chance to listen to all of the designs.More photos would be good too!

Katie Bartas

Read more under “Contest” below.

John Bartas demoing Katie’sSpeakers (Steve H)

John Busch’s or Steve Higgins?(Barry W)

Andy Newell:Open Baffle, Tube Amp Driven

These had a really nice cohesive sound.Made from ElectroVoice 12s.Far exceeded my expectations for a single large driver.Treble, for example was fairly
extended.Also, Andy had some really
interesting test CDs.

Mono Block Amps, Preamp

{Steve H}{Edwin
Y}

Speakers

Notice corrugated cardboard to disperse waves (Edwin)

Greg Dallum

Greg demoed two speakers during the day.See comments below on woodworking.

(Steve H)

Dave Brown

Very interesting rear surround speakers.Tweeters on front and back.Rear tweeter can be in phase or 180 out of
phase.Woofer/mids face listener.From where I was standing, 20+ feet away, I
was impressed with the balance of the sound.I did not get a chance for a close listen.

(Edwin Y) (Barry
W)

Speaker Limbo:Dave
just can’t get all the way down to the sweet spot!(Barry W)Edwin tries but
can’t get there either. (Steve H)

John Bartas

These were really interesting.At some points sounding quite good, but at some musical passages
they interacted badly with the room.John felt the hard surfaces behind the speakers reflected too much of
the rear firing tweeter.Loved the
looks, see woodworking below.

John Jackson

These had a great sound.In the tops, in terms of effortless sound, of many speakers I’ve
heard.John really likes the Acuton
drivers and I have to agree they sounded great.Big bucks though! John
also described how fragile they are later in the day.If you get them, treat them carefully!

(Steve H)(Edwin
Y)

John Busch

John calls these his “Jokes.”He says he did it just to prove it could be done.Well, he did prove it!

These sounded good (without qualification).They sounded very good considering the two
drivers!They use an Eminence 18”
wide range driver and a SS 3800 series tweeter which is really a mid
tweeter.

John really likes vocals and these did a great job on a wide
range of singers.Very relaxed
sound.No hint of MR integration
issues.David Ortega wanted to make a
center channel out of them since the group nixed that idea for his vintage
Yamahas (just kidding David).

(Thurman G)(Barry W)

Woodworking:

Ordered alphabetically

John Bartas

By far the most complicated DIY cabinet design I’ve seen in
person.In the top 3 I’ve seen
anywhere!.Its hard for the photos to
do it justice.

Some notes on it:1.No parallel surfaces.2.The
front consists of three panels.3.The back has a rear firing
woofer and rear firing tweeter.4.The side walls are curved.John laminated three layers of ply together
to create the curved sides before cabinet assembly.John will hopefully post the process to a web site soon as it
does not fit any process I’ve previously seen published.5.Finish is quite nice.

(Steve H)(Thurman
G)

You can see that John executed the design beautifully, but
like many of us, he’s gone back and changed things.Remember, do mock-ups till you are happy with the sound and then
build a stunning cabinet.Many of us,
myself included, whish we had!

John Busch

Impressive sound, but “pullin’ your leg”on the woodworking. ;)

(Steve H)

Greg Dallum’s

Great tight fitting cabinets.Very nice finish.Greg’s comments on them:“the speakers that I built were veneered
with Tape Ease, 2-ply, red oak. The edges were routed and inset with
solid red oak quarter-round. The cabinets were finished with Minwax
natural stain and Minwax satin polyurethane.”

(Thurman G)

John Jackson

John’s still working on his speakers, but everyone loved the
wood used for the top half…

(Steve H)

Contest
Summary

Not all people auditioning speakers brought the forms for
the contest.About 7 speakers were
entered out of 15 or so auditioned.

The contest required the audience to compare the design
intent of the speaker to how successfully that intent was met.Thus, a pair of really expensive speakers
might get beaten by an inexpensive pair because the latter was a better fit
with its original objectives.

It turned out that two lower cost designs ranked very high
with the audience.These two were
ranked A- and B+ respectively.

Sorting out the feedback (Barry W)

Winner:Greg
Dallum’s MTs

Here’s Greg’s description of his speaker objectives:

Summary of Objectives:I wanted to build 3 pairs of fairly good
speakers for my twenty-something kids.They all live in apartments, so a fairly small size was desired.I was looking for good extension and driver
quality at an affordable price.I came
across the Embla design and it seemed perfect.

i)Intended listening environment – small to medium living room

ii)Desired look - Natural wood finish with rounded hardwood
corners

Creating the speakers - The box
is the same internal volume as the Embla plans but the baffle dimensions were
changed slightly to accommodate the extra internal bracing and 7/8” MDF.I used JustMLS and LspCad Standard for
crossover measuring and modeling.My
microphone is an uncalibrated Panasonic WM-61A capsule in a brass wand with a
preamp of my design.The boxes are
veneered with TapeEase 2-ply red oak.Finished with Minwax Natural stain and Minwax Satin Poly.